Locked, fortified, blocked, or barricaded doors and passages oftentimes need to be forcibly opened. For example, law enforcement officers may need to forcibly enter a building to prevent the commission of a crime or to prevent the destruction of evidence. As another example, firemen and emergency rescue teams may need to forcibly enter a building in order to rescue people that are trapped within.
A battering ram is often used to gain entry into these locked buildings. The most common form of battering ram is a manually actuated ram. However, these battering rams are typically very heavy and require more than one person to swing the battering ram against the closure. Furthermore, many hits with these battering rams are required to break through a door, thus allowing criminals ample time to escape, to destroy evidence, or to arm themselves with weapons against the entering law enforcement officers. In an emergency situation such as a fire, every extra second that it takes for the battering ram to penetrate the door is an extra second that the flames will spread. Other devices for forcing doors open, like that disclosed in Yirmiyahu et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,783,053) require painstaking set-up. These types of devices are not useful in emergency situations.
Currently used battering rams are also insufficient when the user is too tall or too short or has to stand at a level higher or lower than the enclosure (e.g. on stairs). In order for the current battering rams like the one that is disclosed in Sabates et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 6,889,591) to work effectively, they have to be held at a right angle to the enclosure.
Other devices that require a conventional firearm or some other explosive device to be fired have also been used to forcibly open doors. However, these devices are dangerous because of the high possibility that a live round may be accidentally loaded into the firearm instead of a blank. Therefore, a need exists for a battering ram that is capable of forcibly opening a locked door with only one hit. The battering ram should also be safer than those forcible entry devices that are powered by firearms or explosive devices. The battering ram should also be able to rest flush against the enclosure despite a user being too tall or too short or despite the user having to stand at a level higher or lower than the enclosure.